Welcome to news, views and satire you can use. Anyone offended by this can be assured it is purely intentional.
For comments on this blog: ottozero2001@yahoo.com ★

otto's war room banner

Thursday, September 05, 2013

US has no “moral high ground” for strikes against Syria

I think most of us have heard
about the plans to bomb Syria, headed by President Barack Obama and soon to be
supported by most of Congress. Andy why must we bomb Syria? According to our
president and others it is a moral obligation over Bashar al-Assad’s human
rights violations caused by his use of chemical weapons.

But what is not being discussed
is needless deaths in the US caused by a lack of health care for poor people.

How many U.S. deaths are caused by poverty, low levels of
education and other social factors? A new study finds that the numbers are
in the same range as deaths from heart attacks and stroke...

The investigators found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United
States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000
to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to
individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to
area-level poverty.
Overall, 4.5% of U.S. deaths were found to be attributable to poverty—midway
between previous estimates of 6% and 2.3%. However the risks associated with
both poverty and low education were higher for individuals aged 25 to 64 than
for those 65 or older.

Those over 65 get Medicare—for
now. So while US politicians blather on about Assad killing innocent women and
children and how a moral stand must be taken, many of these same politicians
have tried to stop Obamacare, which is only a modest attempt to stop the poor
from dying early—needlessly.

Secretary of State John Kerry has
been one of those who have used the “moral” argument for deadly force in Syria.
According to NBC;

Kerry said American inaction would “live in infamy,” and he drew
analogies to black marks of history — the appeasement of Adolf Hitler before
World War II and the U.S.’ refusal to accept a boat full of Jewish refugees
from Germany in 1939.

“There are moments when you have to make a decision,” he said. “And I
think this is one of those moments.”

He added: "A lot of people out in the Middle East count on
us."

"They count on us to help them be able to transition," Kerry
said.

Others, such as Kansas’ Senator
Mike Pompeo, are consistently looking at financial and political concerns over
humanity concerns. According to Politico;

“I’m going to make the case that the president’s response needs to be
much more vigorous, much more robust and actually consider America’s strategic
and national interests in the Middle East more broadly in Syria than some
simple few missiles being lobbed into Syria,” Pompeo said. “We need a strategic
vision with real, definable and achievable goals, and I’m hopeful that Congress
can help the president get there over this next week.”

Pompeo appeared on CNN with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), ranking member
of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who was also in the briefing on
Sunday and said he hopes Congress will give the president some “latitude” to
act in Syria while maintaining a narrow focus.

“I think you can have both. I think that the president must be given
latitude, but I agree with my colleague. I think that we have a long-standing
interest. It’s not simply about a strike for the moment. You have Iran
watching; you have elements that are watching; you have Hezbollah now in Syria;
[President Bashar] Assad has unfortunately become Iran’s proxy. And I think we
have strategic interests,” Engel said.

And Pompeo takes a straight
forward business approach to letting poor people die from a lack of medical
care. From his own
web site;

"The Administration assured the American people that Obamacare was
going to solve the problems plaguing our health care system--despite warnings
even from politicians who supported the law. Those who've expressed worries
about a train wreck have been proven right.
"Delaying the employer mandate is just delaying the harm this terrible law
will bring to consumers, businesses, and health care professionals. The right
answer is to repeal the law, not delay it. Let's just scrap it."

So the concern over costs to businesses
and the health care professionals far outweigh the needs of poor people for
life saving health care. And he is not alone in this position. The US House of
Representatives have voted about 40 times to overturn Obamacare. This
government today has waged a war against poor people, cutting funds for public
education and reducing government safety nets for those who lose their jobs or
who are poor to begin with. Every government agency that is designed to aid
poor people in this country has either had their budgets cut or have been
repealed completely. Even the right to vote has been restricted in many states
by “voter ID” laws and other so called “anti-voter fraud” laws that have kept
mostly minorities and some poor people from voting. Kansas is among the states
that have passed such laws. In Kansas about
15,000 people were blocked from voting by the new restrictions, which is
more than ten times the amount of alleged voter fraud figures used to justify
passing these new laws.

Of all these violations of
people’s rights here in the US, probably the worst are the unnecessary deaths
to the poor due to government neglect on any kind of efforts to insure them.

So how can a country that has
committed human rights abuses against its own people seriously claim to be
acting on a moral and humane obligation to wage militarily strikes at an
inhumane villain?

It is long past time to challenge
the whole idea that this is about human rights. It is about advancing the
strategic interests of the imperialist powers such as the US and Europe. This is
not about human rights at all and it is time that people in this country face
up to that fact.

Otto's Books

Books

Featured Post

By សតិវ ​អតុ It is almost December 25, Christmas in this country, and as much as I love this festive season, I have to put up with th...

Webstats

Gonzo Journalism

RED DE BLOGS COMUNISTAS

The cost of maintaining US Imperialism is high!

No other country in the world puts as much of its budget into the military as the US. This country is the top imperialist power in the world today and that is costing us a lot of resources that are badly needed elsewhere.